Situation Normal: A word, a concept, and the trouble they cause.(shifting demographics and normalcy)(Statistical Data Included)

The latest batch of data released from the 2000 census describes America's household arrangements. There are a tad more than 105 million households in the U.S., of which 72 million are families ("two or more people related by birth, marriage, or adoption and living together"). The statistic that jumped out at everyone was the number of female- headed families with children under 18: nearly 11 percent of all families, up from 9 percent in 1990 and 3 percent in 1950. Of families with children, one in nine is now headed by a single mom, up from one in 30 a half-century ago. (In 1950, it should be remembered, there were many more widows with small children; the death rate was higher, and thousands had been widowed in World War II.)

It will not be a surprise to the reader that our society has changed in a great many ways these past few decades, and that what was once unusual and unfortunate is now commonplace. The fine details, for those who don't feel like trawling through census data, are well presented in Francis Fukuyama's book The Great Disruption. My only aim here is to ask, and then try to answer, the following questions: Have these changes left us with any useful concept of what is normal? Does the word "normal" have any acceptable usage in discussions about our society and culture? With one in nine of our families headed by a single mom, is single motherhood now normal? What else is normal? With gay-themed movies, plays, TV sitcoms, and high-school student societies, is homosexuality now normal? Is it normal to be a Wiccan? A practicing sadomasochist? A libertarian? Is everything now normal? Is the word "normal" itself now de trop, except as a joke word, one of those mock-irregular verbs ("I am normal, you are conformist, he is a slave to convention")? If the concept of normality has passed from the world, is that to be regretted or not?

Certainly both the word "normal" and the thing, normality, were for a long time seriously out of favor with the political Left. In the mind of a boomer liberal, appeals to normality conjured up the conformism and Babbittry of traditional small-town American culture, which, as is well known, suffocated creativity, perpetuated all sorts of obnoxious isms, repressed all authentic human bonds, and supported the Vietnam War. Gopher Prairie was normal; Willy Loman was normal; Ozzie and Harriet were normal. Good riddance to normality! Bring on the gorgeous mosaic of human variety! Groups outside the pale of respectable society have always poked fun at normal people. In Mart Crowley's 1968 play about homosexuals, The Boys in the Band, the partygoers at one point break into an exaggerated simulation of normal-guy conversation: "Ya tink da Giants a gonna win da pennant dis year?" "F***in' A, Mac!" Then they all fall about laughing. Those normals are so weird! As the great cultural revolution picked up speed 30 years ago, the delights of scoffing at normality-or at least the subversive thrill of watching others do so-became available to all.

Liberal hostility to the notion that there might be any such thing as a normal lifestyle was reinforced by a remark by Newt Gingrich-remember Newt Gingrich?-a month before the 1994 midterm elections that gave the Republicans control of Congress. The Clinton Democrats, he declared, should be portrayed by the GOP as "the enemy of normal Americans." Of Ira Magaziner, principal architect of the grandiose Clinton health plan, Newt further observed that "normal Americans do not want government to take over every aspect of their health care." This raised a flurry of scorn from the nation's liberal pundits. "If you are not white, churchgoing and fundamentalist, English-speaking and legally documented, anti-regulation, pro-military, heterosexual, in favor of school prayer and contribute to Republican PACs, your normality is suspect," sneered Colman McCarthy in the Washington Post. "How 'normal' is Newt?" wondered Newsweek. (Their answer: "As normal as many Americans-at least the ones who see their marriages fail, change their views and don't always practice their professed beliefs.")

Yet though a lot of people in these nonjudgmental times would hesitate to use the word, all of us, even liberals, carry around some mental image of social normality. Asked to rank Ward Cleaver, Bill Clinton, and Pee Wee Herman from most to least normal, most people would come up with 1, 2, 3. And does anyone-Rosie O'Donnell, Anthony Lewis-think it is normal to have five wives and

29 children, like the fellow recently convicted of polygamy in Utah? Liberals still eschew the word "normal," but normality itself has made a comeback of sorts. Much of the liberal project in recent years has been characterized by a striving for accreditation as normal of all behavior that is not coercive or inspired by "hate" (for the current definition of which, see below). Witches are no longer malodorous, straggle-haired old crones, living in huts in the woods and concocting potions from bats' blood; they are your neighbor, your bank teller, your kid's teacher. Homosexuals wish it to be known that they are not prancing, shrieking queens and crop- haired viragos on motorbikes, but good bourgeois folk with mortgages, golf-club memberships, and responsible jobs. Wife-swappers, body- piercers, and coprophiliacs all clamor for the mantle of normality. This thing I do is just a harmless hobby. In all the important ways, I'm just like you.

Because everyone wishes to be seen as normal, imputations of abnormality are bitterly resented. A colleague recently asserted, in the pages of this magazine, that: "Mothers who choose to work full-time jobs and routinely leave their young children with others for much of the day are not normal: They are a historical aberration; they represent a minority preference among women; and they run exactly counter to the standard of motherhood that should be encouraged by society. . . . Maybe a little stigma is what they deserve" (Richard Lowry, "Nasty, Brutish, and Short," May 28). This brought down on his head the wrath of Maggie Gallagher, a conservative newspaper columnist, who thought this use of "normal" much too judgmental. "When I hear the word 'stigma,' I want to reach for my revolver," snapped Gallagher, who is far from being a reflexive liberal. Yet what is more normal than maternal affection? Having chosen to give birth to a child, what is more normal than the ...